


union city blues

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: First Kiss, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, M/M, admission of feelings, post-Hunting The Archon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-04-23 15:32:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19153867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: “It sounds…” And there it almost was, Scott was sure. They couldn’t keep going like they had been, with SAM unaware. It wasn’t fair to him and it would make his job harder. If he felt the same way or not was immaterial—not that Scott’s heart had gotten that particular memo. “It sounds almost like you admire me.”Scott’s mouth twitched in amusement. Only SAM would be so restrained about such a confession. It only charmed Scott more and, better, distracted them both from the mission they’d just come back from. Even the sharp, jittery edge of the come down was wearing off, leaving him feeling more human and normal. Thank god. Or maybe thank SAM. “It sounds almost just,” he agreed, cheerful enough that it wasn’t really a lie, though he felt a bit sick, too, with nerves and fear. Thanks, SAM. Keeping the jitters a few minutes longer might have been helpful for this. “I wonder why that might be.”





	union city blues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YunaBlaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YunaBlaze/gifts).



> Title from the song “Union City Blues” by Blondie

“SAM, I could kiss you,” Scott said as he pulled his armor from his body, the door to his quarters barely shut behind him before he started doing so. Post-mission ritual. Always a good time, a chance for Scott to take a breath and come down from the adrenaline high. A laugh bubbled up in the back of his throat as he pulled at each join, placed each piece into the cabinet on the wall. There were some days when that armor felt more like skin and bone and sinew than his own body did. And there were some days when Scott was so buoyant with triumph that no amount of metal and ceramic and synthfab fucking body suits could contain him. This was one of the latter.

It wasn’t every day that Scott came back from the dead and saved the day.

And through it all, SAM had been a god-damned hero, pulling off a miracle beyond Scott’s imaginings.

“Would that even work, kissing you? Could it be done? I’ve never given it much thought. It would have to be the SAM node, wouldn’t it?”

SAM said nothing in response. In fact, SAM hadn’t had much to say throughout Lexi’s medical workup and Tann’s debrief both. He’d only offered the bare minimum in response to their questions. That fact had settled like a toothache in Scott’s awareness, annoying, but not impossible to ignore for short periods of time as long as he didn’t prod at it. Now that they were alone, it came back to the fore, demanded all of Scott’s attention.

“SAM?” he asked, as he tried several times to stick his greaves into the drawer where his gloves were supposed to go. 

The place in the back of his mind where SAM lived became a wild tangle, the mental equivalent of an expletive-laden tirade. Scott counted out a handful of beats, was just on the verge of speaking again when SAM finally did.

With the mental equivalent of a huff, SAM replied, snappish, “I don’t understand the human predilection for…”

Scott waited for SAM to finish his thought. Clearly SAM wasn’t feeling anywhere near as jubilant as Scott about all this. A shame, really, because SAM had been amazing.

Now Scott was scrambling for a way to help SAM feel better about what happened. It had been a stressful mission in a lot of different ways and Scott had no idea how SAM might cope with that.

Were it Scott needing to blow off steam, he’d probably have skulked around the cargo bay waiting for someone to start a poker game—Gil, obviously, though he’d wrangle Vetra and Liam into it, too, and easily enough if Scott was there, they were too smart to engage otherwise—and wash away the remnants of the day with purloined liquor and off-color shit-talking.

Maybe not regulation, but good for morale; his crew was a weird bunch and he was happy enough to indulge them in it, especially since it helped him shake the worst of it, too.

But he didn’t expect it would help SAM, who was clearly troubled by what he’d been through today. Scott regretted putting him through it. If there’d been any other way, he’d have happily done that instead.

“What is it, SAM?” he asked when it was clear SAM would say nothing, the question gentle as he put away his armor piece by piece, inspecting each join thoroughly, more focused on the task now. In a matter of moments, he was done, able to give SAM his full attention.

He could have asked SAM to engage the stereo system, but he liked doing things for himself, so he walked over and twisted the nob so nobody would have to fill a void of silence. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and wished wildly that the SAM node was here so he could see SAM, too, in real, physical space. He’d mostly gotten used to talking to the intangible, invisible being in his head, but it was still hard when there was a serious conversation to be had. It felt a little undignified, like he was talking to himself.

SAM might have been smarter than the rest of them, but he hadn’t gotten much in the way of first-hand combat experience until he came to be in Scott’s head. Though come to think of it, pairing with Alec Ryder was probably a combat experience all on its own. Even so, it was a different sort of combat and Alec never would actually have put SAM in harm’s way before deploying him in Andromeda.

Scott’s father had probably walked him through some N7 training exercises, but that would have been it.

It was Scott who’d had to take him out into live combat and more, ask him to do things even Scott wouldn’t have wanted to do.

Like stopping Scott’s heart. “You—you’re _happy_ ,” SAM said, accusatory. If SAM were a flesh and blood person, there might have been spittle involved for how vehemently he spoke. It was intriguing to hear the wounded dismay in his voice. “I offered to kill you and now…”

 _Now I’m telling you I’d kiss you if I could,_ Scott thought, berating himself. Yeah. He could see how that might be a problem for SAM. Surely he knew it was a figure of speech. Well, he could assume it. The truth was rather more complicated than that on Scott’s end, but this was neither the time nor place.

They didn’t need to get into that now, though, not when SAM was so clearly distressed by what he’d had to do. It was easier for Scott, who’d just had to consent to having his heart stopped, which was hard enough to do on the face of it. But at least he didn’t have the added weight of being the one to take a friend’s life and hope for the best.

That kind of thing fucked with you. Didn’t matter if you were organic or synthetic, it was a big deal.

Better out than in, Sara used to say, sarcastic when one or the other of them was just a little too on-edge emotionally. Time for SAM to learn the same.

“Now?” Scott prompted. He leaned forward on his elbows as he laced his fingers together.

“I’m not unaware of the history between organics and synthetics, Pathfinder.” Was that a plaintive note in SAM’s voice? “You have every right to fear what I’m capable of.”

Oh. _That_. Scott didn’t really intend to scoff at SAM, but as far as concerns went, this wasn’t one for Scott. A lot of people were jumpy about AI and for very good reason sometimes, but the fact that SAM was capable of killing him with little more than a thought didn’t invoke the existential crisis SAM must have been expecting. “SAM, I hate to break it to you, but organics were killing organics without their permission for thousands of years before artificial intelligence was a glimmer in anybody’s eyes.”

“But I could—”

And yeah, Scott was perfectly aware of what artificial intelligence could do. Nobody who had Alec Ryder for a father could escape that knowledge. But that wasn’t SAM. And even if Scott thought he was capable of destroying everyone the way some people did, like AI weren’t as capable of ethics or morals as the rest of them, SAM hadn’t yet done anything wrong and didn’t seem inclined at all to do so.

Some would say it was naïveté.

Or maybe he was keenly aware of how much destruction organics could inflict on one another, too, and didn’t like pre-judging people. Even if people were implants tied to a node that sustained an artificial intelligence instead.

If SAM were there physically, Scott might have taken him by the shoulders and shaken him.

And if he was there physically, he might well have kissed him, too, make good on the rhetoric. Just to get across his point that Scott trusted him. Scott didn’t go around kissing anybody.

Yeah. As though _just_ could accurate articulate anything about the relationship between him and SAM.

His father would roll in his grave if he knew how Scott had taken to having SAM in his head. But as important as Alec thought SAM was for humanity, he probably wouldn’t understand how important SAM was to Scott. He might not have approved either.

“I let you do it,” Scott said. “I would have made it an order, too. And if you hadn’t thought of it first, I probably would have.”

SAM said nothing for a moment, apparently mulling it over. “It was still my actions that led to this result.”

Scott sighed. His stubble pricked at his palm as he dragged his hand across his jaw. His head ached and his eyes prickled. His exhaustion was catching up with him. Coming down from adrenaline highs always sucked. But at least he was alive and his team was alive and they’d gotten out of this mostly unscathed.

And that was because SAM was there to get him out of trouble.

“I apologize, Pathfinder,” SAM said. “You shouldn’t have to—”

“It’s Scott,” he answered, a little abrupt. “You can call me Scott.” _I figure you killing me puts us on a first-name basis if it does nothing else._

Again, there was a pause, as though SAM had to think very hard about the intimacy of the offer. Maybe Scott couldn’t blame him; maybe he wanted to anyway. Just because he wanted to be closer to SAM.

“Scott,” he said finally, weakly. Apologetically. It wasn’t how he would have wanted to hear it, but it was better than the cold impersonality of his title anyway. “I don’t want to have to do that again.”

The specific circumstances weren’t likely to come up and though Scott could have said as much—to be comforting, to brush it off—he knew that wasn’t really what SAM meant. He’d seen enough action, scant though his record still was, to know the truth. And Scott could offer little comfort with regard to it.

Because it was entirely possible that Scott would die in the field one day. And there was nothing SAM could do to protect him from it. And that incapability would feel just as bad as SAM’s supposed culpability on the Archon’s ship if Scott’s intuitions about SAM were right.

Did his father realize the can of worms he was opening when he started humanity down this path? Surely he had to have known something like this was possible.

They’d never talked about his father’s death. Not really. Not how it affected SAM anyway. Scott wished now that he’d thought to do so.

“It’s not your fault, SAM. Whatever happens out there.” And a million possibilities flashed through his mind, bad and worse. He shook his head to clear them from his thoughts. It would do no good to dwell on such things. Letting SAM dwell wouldn’t help either. Too bad Scott had no clue about how to distract an AI from his woes. It wasn’t like he could take him out drinking or something. “We just carry on like we have to, because someone has to.”

“You didn’t choose this.”

At that, Scott laughed a little. SAM’s mind was such a maze; Scott could never quite get a grasp on where his thoughts would lead. “Is that what you’re worried about? I’ve been doing what my dad said all my life. At least what I’m doing here is useful. I’m proud of it.” _This is where I needed to be and I didn’t even know it._ “I don’t regret any of it, SAM. I couldn’t.” In all honesty, he liked who he’d grown to be in their time in the Andromeda galaxy; that wouldn’t have happened if not for SAM. He’d trade it all back so his dad wouldn’t have to die, of course, but since that wasn’t an option, he wasn’t going to deny himself the good parts of it. “This is where I want to be. And I wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else.”

His heart pounded hard against his sternum as he said the words. He hadn’t intended to sound so romantic about the whole thing. But if SAM picked up on it, he wouldn’t lie. And he kind of wished he would. He’d grown attached in their time together. Perhaps he shouldn’t have. It was too late now anyway, that shuttle having taken off long ago.

The best and worst of Scott was constantly on display to SAM and yet SAM never flinched away from it, not even when Scott himself flinched.

Perhaps it was cowardice to fall for something called an adaptive matrix, whose whole purpose was to align itself with Scott, but Scott knew better and knew, too, that though SAM was changing and growing, it wasn’t just at Scott’s whims, wasn’t just to be more of what Scott wanted from him. Things were always more complicated than that when it came to Alec Ryders’ work. SAM’s personality and understanding might be altered by his association with Scott, but who in the galaxy could really say differently about the people they knew?

Scott almost dared him to realize, to say something, anything about it. To be his brilliant self and put two and two together.

“It sounds…” And there it almost was, Scott was sure. They couldn’t keep going like they had been, with SAM unaware. It wasn’t fair to him and it would make his job harder. If he felt the same way or not was immaterial—not that Scott’s heart had gotten that particular memo. “It sounds almost like you admire me.”

Scott’s mouth twitched in amusement. Only SAM would be so restrained about such a confession. It only charmed Scott more and, better, distracted them both from the mission they’d just come back from. Even the sharp, jittery edge of the come down was wearing off, leaving him feeling more human and normal. Thank god. Or maybe thank SAM. “It sounds almost just,” he agreed, cheerful enough that it wasn’t really a lie, though he felt a bit sick, too, with nerves and fear. Thanks, SAM. Keeping the jitters a few minutes longer might have been helpful for this. “I wonder why that might be.”

“I am what your father made me to be,” SAM insisted, humble. “And what our time together has taught me to be. Nothing more or less.”

That was sweet truly and Scott was proud of who SAM had become, but that wasn’t the point. “You deserve the praise. Not me. Not dad either.” It was so funny to him how thoroughly human SAM was in so many ways. He was an AI and yet he carried some of the same flaws that the rest of humanity did. Being too humble, for example, and too unable to see what was in front of him.

Scott didn’t know how to express his affection to an AI and he hadn’t taken much time before now to consider how he might do so. Suffice it to say, he’d be doing so now. He wished he had something to look at. SAM node, maybe, just to get his bearings. He imagined the twining, bright-lit particles of his visualization and smiled. You couldn’t kiss light, he supposed, but he’d like to think of some way to show SAM what he meant to Scott. It would be worth it, he thought, if he could just manage it.

He would. As soon as he was able.

“You said you would kiss me?” SAM asked, after a moment, taking Scott by surprise. He’d thought they were past this, that SAM had conveniently skimmed over this fact in his confusion. “That’s a statement of exaggeration.”

Perhaps he’d come across it before with someone else on one of the Pathfinder teams. It wouldn’t have surprised Scott, though it made him a little sad that they might have confused him in the process.

“In some cases, yes,” Scott said, heart pounding harder again. He would have to make the admission now or let it go. And he didn’t want to let it go. “In some cases, it’s meant genuinely.”

“In this case?”

“I’d kiss you,” he replied, “if I could.”

“Are you disappointed that you can’t?”

The question took him aback. He hadn’t considered the possibility or impossibility one way or the other, really, when he’d said it. Sure, he’d have liked to. But there was plenty he would have liked to do. It didn’t bother him that he couldn’t, except for the fact that he didn’t know a better way to show his intentions to someone. That would change if he had his way. It just required a little thought. Unless SAM wasn’t interested at all. In which case, Scott wouldn’t pursue it against his wishes. “No,” Scott admitted, “not beyond the fact I don’t know how to… uh, how to show you how I feel about you.”

Still not the brave admission he might have made with someone who didn’t primarily reside inside his head, but he’d be forgiven for his hesitance in new circumstances, he was sure. SAM certainly would. SAM had forgiven him for worse in his time.

If SAM could nod thoughtfully, Scott thought that was what he might be doing right now, turning over Scott’s words within his own mind. Scott gave him as much space as he could, didn’t push or prod for a response that would satisfy him. He could wait as long as he had to for SAM to reach the conclusion he needed to in order to feel satisfied himself.

“I didn’t realize,” SAM said finally, after less time than Scott might have expected. “You had romantic intentions when you said that?”

“Perhaps,” Scott replied. “Would that bother you?”

Another delay, though this one was somehow less terrifying than it should have been. SAM wasn’t going into catastrophic shut down over it anyway. That was the only thing that truly mattered, whether or not he agreed.

“No,” SAM said. “Though I might not have considered the possibility viable before today.”

“Oh?” That… didn’t sound bad, not at all. “What changed?”

SAM didn’t insult him by speaking the obvious: _you died_. “I realized how important it was that you didn’t die,” he said instead, not quite the same thing. “As I was trying to revive you, all I could think of was what I would do if it didn’t work. There are protocols in place; I knew what would happen, what would have to happen. It was not a comfort to me to know continuity would be maintained. Working with another Pathfinder feels as out of the question as you dying does. You were important to me before, of course, but my understanding of the implications has changed.

“Perhaps I should be concerned by this development,” SAM mused further. “But I cannot be when I remain so grateful that you survived at all.”

Scott’s throat tightened and his stomach clenched as SAM spoke.

“I’m in a little better position than you to simulate the feeling of a kiss,” SAM continued, “and I would gladly do so should you wish it.”

Scott bit his lip, skin prickling with desire, enervated by the thought of it. It should have concerned him, too, maybe. But Scott didn’t know what else to do. It wouldn’t protect either of them to deny the fact. He’d seen enough go wrong in his own family, distractions and problems that never needed to exist, simply because nobody would be truthful. Scott didn’t want to live that way. It may have been foolish, but they could all die out here and soon. Scott wanted to experience in his own life what he could for as long as he could.

He wanted SAM to simulate the feeling of a kiss with him; he wanted to let himself be known fully by one being in the galaxy.

That it so happened to be an AI hardly mattered at all. Didn’t even remotely faze him.

“Yeah, SAM,” he replied, dragging a deep breath into his lungs. They’d figure this out together, the same way they’d figured out everything else. “I’d like that.”

It was exactly like plunging into a pool from the top of a cliff, that kiss, and Scott knew now that he’d never get enough of it, that this was it for him.

It wasn’t anything like what he imagined for himself.

It was everything.


End file.
